Suspected militants killed three North Korean doctors in north-eastern Nigeria, beheading one of them, in the latest attack on health workers in a nation under assault by a radical Islamic sect.

The deaths in Potiskum, a town in Yobe state, long under attack by the Boko Haram sect, came on Saturday after gunmen killed at least nine women administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city of Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north.

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The Islamists apparently attacked the doctors in their home, said Dr Mohammed Mamman, chairman of the hospital managing board of Yobe state. The North Koreans had no security guards and typically travelled around the city via three-wheel taxis without a police escort.

By the time soldiers arrived, they found the doctors’ wives cowering in a flower bed outside their home. The bodies of the men appeared to have machete wounds. An AP journalist later reported that he saw the North Korean doctors’ corpses. Two of the men had their throats slit. Attackers beheaded the other doctor.